Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/354

 that time the district on the northwest frontier of Hungary, mountainous and wooded and known as Krajina (marchia Ruthenorum), was inhabited only by hunters, beaters and falconers of the king. Frequently these Hungarian districts were granted to members of the royal family who were called dukes. Emerich, son of St. Stephen, bore the title of dux Ruizorum which seems to refer to this region. After the retreat of the Tartars from Hungary many villages came to be established in the Slav Krajina which extended over the counties of Saryš, Zemplin, Užhorod and Bereg. Their Rusian name was Volja, analogous to the Czech Lhota. The head man of these villages bore the title of kňaz; if he administered an entire district, he was known as krajnik. This title had reference to his duties which consisted in watching the frontier or Krajna (compare with the Russian Ukrajina), namely a frontier country or a march.

These Rusin privileged villages were established in the north of Hungary from the 13th to the 16th century. Particularly in the 14th century, when the Lithuanian prince Theodore Korjatovich of Novgorod with his large suite was received by king Louis, numerous Rusin groups settled in Hungary. Prince Theodore received the manor of Satoralja-Ujhely and Humenne in the county of Zemplin and from 1398 he was called the voivod or duke of Mukačev. About that time the Mukačev district was colonized by Rusins. Aside from Rusin peasants with fixed habitations many Rusin nomads wandered with their flocks over the northeastern mountain ranges, but from the middle of the 17th century they gradually disappeared.

All these Rusins formed part of the free population and preserved their freedom even after the peasant revolution of 1514, when serfdom was imposed upon the rest of the country people of Hungary. The Hungarian code Tripartitum provides in volume 2, chapter 25, article 2, that Kumans, Rusins and Bulgarians settled on royal land shall be free peasants and their liberty shall be maintained.

The Rusins of Hungary showed little inclination for city life. They preferred to gather in small fortified places resembling villages. Among the cities of northern Hungary Huszt in the country of Marmoroš had the most Rusins. The Rusin element is even more rare among the Hungarian nobility; like the Roumanians they passed, when ennobled, into the ranks of the Magyars. Among renegades of Rusin origin are families Orosz, Telegdy, Tarnoczy, Komlossy, Ormandy and others. It is interesting to note that the first codification of Hungarian laws (Corpus Juris Hungarici,) had for its authors two Slavs of whom Nikolas Telegdy, bishop of Pecs, was Rusin, and the other Zacharias Mossoczy, surnamed Rohošnik, was a Slovak.

The free peasant population began to be enslaved by the nobility in the 16th century. This affected the position of the Rusin clergy who were recruited from the peasants. A number of documents dating from the 17th century indicate that the Rusin clergy was held by the lords to the same servitude as the peasants, had to pay the same contributions and were even subjected to corporeal punishment and imprisonment. At the same time the material position of the clergy was pitiful. They had no ecclesiastical landed property and they were not entitled to tithes, as the Catholic clergy, and so their only means of support were the fruit of their hands and fees for priestly services which were insignificant.

It was this poverty and servitude of the Rusin Orthodox Clergy which made possible the union of their church with the See of Rome. It gave the priests an independent personal status as against the nobles, improved their economic situation and in general brought to them the advantages enjoyed by the Catholic clergy. The origin of the Uniate Church among the Rusins of Hungary cannot be traced with exactness. It is believed that the union was concluded in 1649, although Petrov gives 1652 as the date. The conditions were that the bishop should be elected by the people, and in fact the episcopal see was for some time filled by elections held by the secular and regular clergy. But the election had to be approved by the king and sanctioned by the pope, and gradually the influence of the royal power and of the Catholic clergy did away with free elections. The last free choice of bishop was held in 1733. From 1738 on, the Hungarian chancery and the archibishop of Eger proposed to the king three candidates of whom the king selected one.

Union made slow progress among the Rusins of Hungary; it was more than a cen-